February 2009

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» I went up to Meijer real quick. I had a short list of things I needed. Including light bulbs. I got my first pack of Compact Florescent light bulbs. hmmm... After screwing in the CFL bulb, it only took one of me to do that if you're wondering, I'm not sure I like the light as well as a nice energy wasting regular bulb.

» Also swung by Staples on the way back home. I saw a couple of the large HP all-in-one touchscreen desktop computers. They had a 22in touchscreen All-in-one floor model for $945. Very slick opening up paint and drawing across a surface that large

» Still wrapping my brain around the Kevin Kelly TED talk I watched this morning. The concept of a post-web already is just mind expanding.

» Along the same thought plane I've been thinking about this NPR Science Friday podcast that looked at a scientific study that promotes buying experiences over buying things.

Psychologists say people reported feeling happier when they spent their money on experiences rather than objects. Ryan Howell, a San Francisco State University psychologist who led the study, explains the results and speculates on whether the findings extend to gift-giving.

I've been wondering why people would keep working in a post-Walmartization of cheap quality goods. I've been noticing the focus on travel and experiences in my own office environment for awhile, but I think there's something to the above interview. I think this is going to be where they, they in the generic sense, shape the zeitgeist next. There needs to be a reason to go to work, and with goods becoming cheaper, experiences are starting to feel like the direction they, again in the generic sense, will push the American mindset next.

More thoughts on this on my blog in the weeks and months to come I think.

Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.

Thus an average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.

Put differently, people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,” says Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a polling organisation. Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.

The above concepts along with my recent thoughts on People Time and Math as well as my “just getting a little older” is really making me think about the actual scope and size of people that I can have intimate, influencial, and meaningful relationships with.

It's a small number, and I find myself dwelling on how to attract and interact with the “right” small number.

More thoughts on this in the weeks and months to come as well I think.

I think my commenting system is broke. It just says invalid user when I try to leave a comment. I'd log into the system and check it but I haven't had the password to do that in about 3 years. (It was tied to an old email that no longer exists.

I may need create a new commenting system or at least migrate to the newest version of their software.

I have a Pocket PC. An archaic phrase I know. But in the grand scheme of things it isn't that old of a device. In anycase, it's battery is completely dead at the moment.

Y'see, I haven't touched the the thing in at least two weeks and also haven't put it in it's charging cradle in at least that long as well. This is the second time I've had it go dead in the last 4 months, from extreme lack of use and way to much standby time. Previously in the last 5 years or so, I've only had it's battery and backup battery completely die twice. so to have it happen again twice in a few months, hmm... habits have changed..

I don't use the Pocket PC much. There was a time when we were inseperatable. I used to have podcasts, TV show downloads and AvantGo, eBooks, and I used Wi-Fi web on it. I used the note taking app and Word and Excel on it incessantly.

Then a couple years ago, I got a web enabled phone, and all the web information I used to access with the Pocket PC, I ceased accessing, the phone was easier to grab info from the web. Then I got a little sandisk MP3 player and all my podcast playback went to that, because the battery life on the MP3 player would go for weeks and weeks of use on my morning drive. But still the Pocket PC was good for note taking and retrieval of Word and Excel documents.

Then a little over a year ago I got an Asus Eee PC. The Eee is so much better for Word and Excel, and PDFs, graphic apps like Gimp and Inkscape and using Wi-Fi I grab Google Docs from the either. the Eee is small too. I can take it into any conference room and use it for notetaking. And typing is so much faster and useful than hand notetaking on the Pocket PC. And video, the Eee has a larger screen and it tilts toward me. I was always propping up my Pocket PC against a salt shaker or napkin holder to watch video while I ate.

The netbook has killed my use of my Pocket PC. The sole two uses in the last year or so that I have used the PPC for has been hand scribbling note taking of shopping lists, and occasionally the calculator. It's sad, because I used to so love my PPC. Nothing about it changed, but I just had these other devices come into use, and I find myself with little use for it. So little, that I forget for several weeks to take it out of my bag and charge it, because it's been a couple weeks since I've even used it. And so it is, my Pocket PC battery is dead.

I'll charge it tonight though-- if I remember.

iPhones and Blackberries and Pre's oh my

I'm waiting til June to see/get the Palm Pre. I want a better web enabled phone, but I want one that shoots video, this leaves iPhone a non-option. On my phone I do: email, camera, calling, and video. I also occasionally like Sprint TV for CNN.

I love the look of all those shiny neat iPhone apps, but then I think of my Pocket PC and wonder, will I use them or will I just take 25 seconds to boot up my netbook?

But video? I know I use that, and it would be something I miss switching to an iPhone, so Pre it looks like it will be. (And I like the Pre's real keyboard too.)

...unless Android adds video support before the Pre... then, hmmm, who knows.

Why, Mr. Anderson, why? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something, for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is, do you even know? Is it freedom or truth, perhaps peace -- could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself. Although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson, you must know it by now! You can't win, it's pointless to keep fighting! Why, Mr. Anderson, why? Why do you persist?

If one of the people you follow targets their message at someone you do not follow, you do not see that comment.

If a person you follow targets a message at another person you follow, you do see that comment.

Recently some of the people I follow were getting very very chatty. I was getting too many updates. I liked following all the people I was following, and I like seeing their general comments, but I wasn't very interested in alot of the crosstalk they were having with eachother.

There is an exponential twitter multiplier effect. The more networked together the people you follow are, the more chatter you get.

Since I was getting too many messages, I looked at this connected group and unfollowed one of them to cut back on the multiplier effect. By getting rid of the one person I not only lost that persons few messages, but I hid from view the 5 or 6 people's messages targeted at that user which were greater in quantity than even the unfollowed user's messages.

I can envision a day when twitter will need to give you granular control of the connections you can view between individual people on your follow list, where you will be able to specifically exclude connections between individual people, yet still see their general posts or their crosstalk with other friends.

Sadly that granular control is not here yet, so in order to exponentially reduce tweets, I had to cut one person to reduce my view of the crosstalk on that specific group.

The common notion about entertainment is that the better the quality, the bigger the audience. There's some truth to that. But what I find more interesting is that it works the other way too: You need popularity before you have the luxury of developing quality.

Entertainment gets a chance to find an audience only if the concept is so simple it can be understood in a few words.

So here is the key learning. If you are planning to create some business or other form of entertainment, you will need quality at some point to succeed. But what is more important than quality in the beginning is some intangible element that makes your project inherently interesting before anyone has even sampled it. That initial audience will give you the luxury of time to create quality.

I have a twofold test for whether something can obtain instant popularity and thus have time to achieve quality:

But why do people hate Valentine's Day? Do people not like red and pink? Are people anti-love or anti-doing-things-for-people-they-love? Do people hate cards, chocolates and flowers? Really, what's the deal with hating a holiday constructed to celebrate all those things?

Or do people hate Valentine's Day because we are a "too me centric society"?

Valentine's Day is exclusionary compared to many other holidays. To fully participate in Valentine's Day you have a prerequisite of being in a positive relationship or coupleship. Are we growing that petty that we condemn a holiday because it excludes us?
I'll admit, historically speaking I have not been able to fully participate in Valentine's Day more often than I have been able to. But I don't begrudge the holiday.

Too many people seem to feel judged by it. I don't think they should see it that way at all. All holidays do not have to pertain to everyone. I mean, Mother's and Father's Day is a little one sided for many people, but I don't see the vitriol for those. So to all the Valentine's Day haters out there, relax abit. Sure the holiday was created by card companies, but there's nothing inherently bad about the concept.

As I look around the gray Michigan landscape in mid-February, I'm happy for any day that just promotes a little color and it's ok to me if I get nothing more out of it than that.

05:04:02 PM Sat 02/14/09 Chris » Song.ly is a site where you can put in a link to an mp3 and it will give you a tinyurl like link to a player that you can paste into twitter or email.

05:00:13 PM Sat 02/14/09 Chris » ginipic.com is a very very slick windows desktop application for searching and working with images from a bunch of different internet services. Take a look at this go2web20.net article

04:46:20 PM Sat 02/14/09 Chris » 99chats.com looks like a quick and easy way to add a chat room to any web page.

» I saw a free advance showing of The International this evening. Well worth seeing Free. I wouldn't see it in the theater unless you really like Thriller/CSI type Novels. You could certainly wait until DVD or Cable. There were three quotes/lines in the movie that made me think... and that's more than most movies. One quote was on banks and debt, the second quote was on the truth, the third was a rather long speech about the state of the world. Movie starred Clive Owen and he spends most of the film trying to look as intensely at the camera as possible.

» Trying to figure out some stuff at work lately. Trying to figure out what the place "wants" beyond money. All corporations want money, but corps are collections of people too, and people want things. For example, Apple wants money, but they also want to be considered to have taste. Google wants money, but they also want to be smart. I'm trying to figure out what the gestalt at my place wants. I've been there awhile, I used to know what "they" wanted, but things do change and lately, I'm not really sure.

» Also trying to figure out what I want to do after work in the larger cosmic sense. If the past couple decades are any indication, things should continue to remain fairly solitary (with occasional bursts of social activity, much like "light showers") You can never predict life of course, but past performance can be indicative of future results. With contacts and relationships generally fleeting, there's just a certain futility to it. Not in a despair way, but in a sand castle sort of way. ie: It's all well and good to build an elaborate sand castle but if the tide is going to roll in and wash it away, well there is a sense of futility to it after the waves roll out. The more waves I see coming, and the older I get, I do see the waves coming, the less interested lately I have been in getting out my bucket and shovel.

» Hmm, that's all for now, tomorrow is already Thursday. Time can really fly sometimes.

If you liked Jumper, you'll probably like Push. If you like and buy comics you'll probably like Push. If you liked the first season of Heroes, before it started to suck. you'll probably like Push. If you did not like any of those things, you probably won't like Push.

» A week ago I did a post I titled People, Time and Math. Lately, Been thinking more about that, along with thoughts on power, money and self. Also have been watching people in cars who get cutoff, or find themselves unable to turn because of traffic. Been watching the dysfunction of politics post-election. Been thinking about all the advances of technology and what they mean to our interaction with people. Been thinking of some things my mother said, and my grandmother said, and my grandma said. Been thinking of Ben Affleck on a Big ass boat in He's just not that into you (not Ben, but the concept that represents.). Been thinking about "first mover advantage" and "power law". Been thinkng about growth and exponential growth. Been thinking about the desire for lies and the distain for truth. Been putting all those thoughts and more into one big crockpot of thought.

I think my brain has come to some conclusions based on the above, but my brain also has locks and safeguards, sometimes fortunately and sometimes not, that are preventing those conclusions from passing into any sort of accepted thought. Perhaps one night soon, while I sleep, the locks will be loose and guard will drop down and the conclusions will fully slip thru, settle and take hold. That's how it usually happens, not with a start, but a sleepy quiet realization acted out in a dream that really isn't such.

I saw this movie at a matinee today with a few people. I enjoyed seeing at the theater, because I love movie theaters. I enjoyed seeing it with the group i was with. I enjoyed the first half or maybe 3/4 of the movie. Now I'll tear part of it apart. I'll try not to give anything away, but stop now if you don't want to be spoiled.

First off, I am not familiar with the book other than it was supposed to be a popular dating guide for women out not too long ago. One structural plus to the film is it's little asides with "real people" or at least real looking people that are obviously paraphrasing parts of the book. These scenes are very pop culture documentary style and are very funny.

The cast is varied, large and filled with likeable romantic comedy actors and actresses. I won't break them all down. You can go watch the trailer and see the star power and archetypes for yourself. I will say that they manage to represent several different single and couple archetypes across the late twenties/thirties spectrum.

This is an ensemble piece, and the movie introduces the characters one by one well and takes it's time showing you how they are all connected. Since they are all connected you get several different overlapping stories that get more interconnected as the film carries on and these connections are quite fun. And most of the scenes are amusingly constructed, working individually and as part of the whole.

At it's core the movie spends most of it's time illustrating why many popular women's misconceptions on dating are just that, misconceptions. I imagine this is in keeping with the book.

By it's end however, Hollywood really comes into play and undoes all the movie's "lessons" and reinforces all the misconceptions the first part of the movie skillfully dismantles.

There is a reoccurring line, paraphrasing, "everyone thinks that they are the exception when in fact they are actually the rule." By the end of the movie, everyone in the film, however, is the "exception" and gets their Hollywood ending, except for two characters, who cross the "social line", and as you would expect in a Hollywood film, get the "ending they deserve".

It's a good movie, I did enjoy it, I would have liked it to take more of an indy high road at the end, instead of the well worn Hollywood path, but if you like any of the actors in this film, you'll like them here. They all play wonderfully to type. If you're leaning toward seeing, go see.

P.S. Oh and guys if your girlfriend/wife wants to see this film but you'd rather see Taken or Push. It is the Valentines season, so you might want to just go with her on this one, it's a nice guy thing to do and you'll be rewarded with two or three Scarlet Johansen scenes well worth the price of admission (and a pretty good scene with Jennifer Connley too. ;)

P.P.S Somewhere out there, is a friend that will see a scene in this movie, and may think of me and laugh a little extra hard for no apparent reason.

I want to hear your

Video PostClick the Picture to Play the Video
3 gas stations no air 4 tires

Had an Office-wide electrical failure around 4pm today. Lights started flickering then my computer made a noise and "turned off". Hopefully they have the issue resolved by Monday. And hopefully my computer isn't completely fried. I'd hate to get a new one and have to reset up everything again.

Below is some video of the crazy strobe lighting effect we were getting. It is not an artifact of the video. It really looked like that for the 30 min before they managed to turn off the lights and I went home.

Just saw this Star Trek Next Generation clip on io9. It's one of my favorite Star Trek scenes ever. As it explains why all the races in Star Trek are primarily bipeds and look the same except for bumpy foreheads, spots or strange ears.

Today is rolling like runaway train. I was up late due to the Superbowl last night, so got a slightly late start into work. Went over to our other office building across the street this morning. Had a meeting with our eCom area. Haven't been over there too much but I enjoyed it, it's fun getting a chance to talk technical things with technical people.

Back to the Superbowl-- Hulu was very impressive. they had the commercials up on one clean web page within a respectable timeframe of the commercials airing on TV. They also had a RSS feed set-up that pushed out the commercials in a steady stream too. On my own front, I tweaked around with some AJAX chat software and created a live blog page which I live blogged my reactions to the Superbowl event on. Worked pretty well I think. I am going to expand the page though. Build in a chat window and possibly embed a stickcam or a ustream camera. I also want to better integrate loading photos along with the text. Not sure when the next major tv event will be to make that useful but soon. It'll be a fun project.

The live blog is just an interesting exercise to tinker with and contemplate when it is preferable when compared to twitter, IRC, IM or a forum or a web chat room.

Our work cafeteria is under new management today. There are napkin dispensers on every table. The plates are black plastic styrofoam (classy compared to the paper boats before) hamburger was fine, fries were crinkle cut and slightly smaller portioned. The rest of the cafeteria seemed similar to the previous company in set-up and execution. They had cheesecake that I might try out at afternoon break. Not much junk food in the cafeteria section, but I'm going to go check out the new vending machines on my way back downstairs.

Lots to do this afternoon, so the rest of the day should go fast.

New Heroes tonight. I fully expect it to suck, and after tonight I'm not sure I'm going to watch it on Mondays... may just let them collect and view them as filler if the show is as bad as I expect it to be.

That's all for now, have a good Monday internets, maybe more from me later.

08:13:45 PM Sun 02/01/09 Unnameditems in the middle of the tv look 3d but anytime the subject gets cropped it goes flat with the plane of the frame

08:13:13 PM Sun 02/01/09 Unnamedtried it again with the sobe glasses and came to the conclusion that the real problem is that the 3d doesn\'t work when any part of your subject gets cut off by the tv screen frame

08:12:31 PM Sun 02/01/09 UnnamedI tried the 3d commercials with some other glasses that were more red and more blue... they didn\'t work

08:05:32 PM Sun 02/01/09 Unnamed3d commercials didn\'t work for me... not sure if it\'s my tv or the glasses... I\'m ging to rewind the dvr and try some different glasses

07:59:57 PM Sun 02/01/09 Unnamedlive blogging in 3d

07:55:20 PM Sun 02/01/09 Unnameddude landed on his head

07:51:23 PM Sun 02/01/09 UnnamedIf your hair covers up your name on your jersey... it\'s probably too long for football

10:26:47 AM Sun 02/01/09 Chris » Crap, I wanted to get the Palm Pre, but it won't have video recording at launch. That's a requirement for me. Looking more and more like I'm going to have to get a blackberry or just keep my flip phone for now. link

09:46:03 AM Sun 02/01/09 Chris » Chrysler uses some of it's bailout money to sponsor Chrysler cars in the movie: Terminator Salvation. Which is cool, because when you think "end of the world" now you can think "Chrysler" link

09:41:27 AM Sun 02/01/09 Chris » Google JavaScript APIs get a playground link I want to start hooking my blog into more services with this sort of stuff.

09:37:41 AM Sun 02/01/09 Chris » MakeBeliefsComix.com is a neat web app you can make comic strips with. Great if you can't draw, but are dying to do a three panel joke link

09:27:43 AM Sun 02/01/09 Chris » Leyio Personal Sharing Device, uses UWB and also USB sticks. Even if they ever shut down Bittorrent and sharing on the internet, these things would make Filesharing continue. link

Sat, 25 May 2013 07:57:39 -0700
I?m not a fan of the new Flickr redesign. It?s not even that I don?t like the visual look of it.My primary beef is: without warning they completely changed the service for paying customers. I?ve payed for a Pro account for years under the assumption that paying for a service would provide a little more reliability. Flickr has shown that not to be the case, so I?m planning to use it far less frequently and probably far differently than the personal photo site of record I have been using it as. (I?m also not pleased with their likely upcoming attention/advertising model)

I was able to put all my photos into one Set and download the full size images using a free service called flickandshare.com, so I have everything safely out of the service now. Likely I will eventually set up my own simple photo gallery (and give these photos a new home) on my website at chris-karath.com. Hosting your own services and codes seem to be the most reliable method for content that you want around for years to come.

Photos that are here now, will probably continue to be here, Yahoo willing, into the future.

Since Flickr has shown itself to be of unpredictable stability, and it appears to be transforming into more a social network than a photo service, I?ll probably plan on treating it as such. If you subscribe to my account for the action figures, I?ll probably from time to time still post a picture or two of those here with links back to my own site where I?ll likely start posting more photos.

If you follow for my personal photos, following me on Twitter or my personal blog atchris-karath.com will probably be your best bet. --- Best wishes, Chris.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
I've never actually taken the full tour of the Museum. It was free today, so we went through it. It's nicely done for it's sort of thing.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
Those light poles to the shore should be dry land

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:01 -0700
Stairways to nowhere. Grand Rapids.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:00 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:59 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:58 -0700
Grand Rapids Art Museum. This display is by a new guy who just joined our team at work.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:49:01 -0700

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:17:53 -0700
Both these guys have contributed a lot to comics. I'm not implying anything with the choice of pose. I figure in classic comic parlance though, these two comic heroes would be obligated to fight before teaming up to defeat some great evil.

Recent Blog Comments

Thread: p1825 Post by Jolloway2013-02-23 12:23:49 Hi Cris and other people who view this sight,
I just started a blog site jolloway.co.uk and I wonderd if anyone can give me any tips on blogging. I am curently using a site called word press to host me blog. I start around about a month ago and I\'m really struggling with it and if you do reply I\'m only 11 and found this sight by a photo in google Images.
-Josh
P.S. I love the background XP

Thread: p1706 Post by Chris2012-10-27 13:29:47 Fortunately, I resisted the DC/Master Bundles as they were pretty much only bundled with basic figures I already had. Had they been bundled with more unique DC figures, I might have alot more Masters figures at this point ;)

Thread: p1706 Post by De2012-10-27 13:06:27 I almost bit on Masters of the Universe when they were being bundled with DC Universe figures in the two-packs. I\'ve also liked the blending of sci-fi and fantasy but a lad only has so much room :-)

Thread: p1674 Post by T. Bass2012-10-24 20:55:50 Hi Chris:
Like you, I bought and just received an ONDA V701. Mine took 32 days (!) to arrive from China (bought from gadgetdealer.com... avoid like plague), and the box was beat to hell, but it seems to work fine ....with one exception.
That said, I like the tablet thus far, but a couple of things aren\'t flying right. One, it was advertised as having Adobe Flash ver. 11.1, but instead, mine came with 10.2. Yours? Not sure this matters, as Flash is going the way of the dodo-bird as far as Android goes.
My only real complaint thus far, and that despite trying everything I could find online, I cannot get NetFlix to work. This was/is one of the main reasons I bought it, as they advertised that it \"works with NetFlix\". I don\'t know whether it\'s the tablet, or the app that is the problem, but nonetheless, no love from NetFlix at this point.
I don\'t know if you are subscribed to Netflix, but if you are, I sure would like to know if it works for you on your V701, and if so, how did you get it going, and what settings are you\'re using to make it work? Appreciate hearing from you.
Best,
T. Bass
Applegate, Oregon

Thread: p1557 Post by davy2012-08-24 17:58:58 i kind of agree with you, and i\'m sure bale had the best intentions but the whole media circus at times is disturbing.
but if to had to pick on whether bale should have visited or not i\'d rather he visit for the sole reason that if he made any of the survivors feel good,even if it was only for the briefest moments, then it was worth it.
the victims medical and emotonals needs should be put first and if bale\'s visit helped any of them emotionally then i\'m glad